The existing welding machines present great flexibility as to welding of the longitudinal wires. The steps between the longitudinal wires may be shiftable, among them (mutually among all of them, and/or between, or among, any of them), along the length of production of the mesh.
Welding machines that produce standardized mesh have advancement mechanisms and welding heads or welding locations with electrode pairs, at fixed distances. Their flexibility, however, ends simply at (extends only as far as) the production of meshes with steps of longitudinal wires at multiples of a basic distance. Changes to the spacings of the longitudinal wires requires many mechanical tasks and is time consuming.
In another category of welding machines the supplying of longitudinal wires is made manually from precut wires. Changes in the spacings between the longitudinal wires is made by manually moving the welding heads, the guides and the related mechanisms. This machine presents some flexibility but low productivity because of the manual feeding of the longitudinal wires.
Another category of welding machines is that wherein the supply of the longitudinal wires is made from precut wires and the movement of the welding heads, the guides, and the related mechanisms is made via automation and may produce meshes with changeable steps of the longitudinal wires without limitation as to the step. In such machines the longitudinal wires are automatically supplied from a longitudinal wires deposition table/storage at a feeder carrier having magnetic mechanisms or mechanisms with grippers. The disadvantages of these machines are that the feeding mechanisms for the longitudinal wires, in order that the automated grippers function, require a large number of longitudinal wires at the location of initial automated receiving and that the longitudinal wires in this case may be of only one diameter. A further disadvantage is that towards the end of production of a series of produced meshes the precut wires must be placed on the feeder manually. Furthermore, they cannot produce meshes having different lengths of longitudinal wires nor meshes having openings. These machines are not capable of producing small quantities of meshes (1-20 pieces) because of the peculiarities (peculiarities, particularities, individuality) of the feeding mechanisms that require a large number of longitudinal wires.